Walsh v. River Spinning Co.

• Decision Date: 05 July 1918
• Docket Number: No. 385.,385.
• Citation: 103 A. 1025,41 R.I. 490
• Parties: WALSH v. RIVER SPINNING CO.
• Court: Rhode Island Supreme Court

103 A. 1025

41 R.I. 490

WALSH

v. RIVER SPINNING CO.

No. 385.

Supreme Court of Rhode Island.

July 5, 1918.

Appeal from Superior Court, Providence and Bristol Counties; Willard B. Tanner, Justice.

Proceedings under the Workmen's Compensation Act by Mary Walsh for compensation alleged to be due from the River Spinning Company, employer, on account of the death of her husband John Walsh, employe. Decree for petitioner, and employer appeals. Affirmed and remanded.

Lester T. Murphy, of Providence, for petitioner. Gardner, Pirce & Thornley, of Providence, for respondent.

SWEETLAND, J. This is a petition brought under the Workmen's Compensation Act by Mary Walsh for compensation alleged by her to be due from the respondent on account of the death of her husband, John Walsh, by accident arising out of and in the course of his employment in the service of said respondent. The petition was heard before a justice of the superior court, who ordered the entry of a decree in favor of the petitioner. Said decree contains the finding that said John Walsh, while engaged in the employment of the defendant, "received a personal injury by accident arising out of and in the course of his said employment, heat exhaustion, while working as a fireman." The matter is before us upon the respondent's appeal from said decree.

The respondent contends that there was no legal evidence before said justice which warranted the finding that the death of John Walsh was due to heat exhaustion, and, further, that heat exhaustion is not an accident within the meaning of our Workmen's Compensation Act.

As a part of its first claim the respondent urges that said justice erred in admitting the testimony of a certain medical witness in response to a hypothetical question as to the probable cause of John Walsh's death. There is no error in said ruling. The value of the witness' testimony might be questioned in argument before said justice; but its admissibility is clear.

There was evidence before said justice upon which he might find that heat exhaustion was the cause of the decedent's death; and in accordance with the provisions of the Workmen's Compensation Act such finding of fact on the part of a justice of the superior court is conclusive upon appeal, in the absence of fraud.

It appears that John Walsh was a fireman employed in the boiler room of the respondent company on September 17, 1915; that the temperature out of doors on that day was warm; that in said boiler room three boilers were being operated; that the temperature of the room was very hot; that the other fireman employed with said John Walsh was obliged to leave his work that day because of the great heat in the room. The engineer of the respondent testified that "the load was rather heavy on the boilers" that day, and in answer to the question, "When you have a heavy load on like that, what difference does that make in the temperature in the boiler room?" the witness replied, "Well, when you burn more coal, you naturally made more heat both in the fire box and in the boiler room." In the afternoon of that day, while at his work, said Walsh was overcome by the excessive heat, and was afterwards taken to a hospital, where he died on the morning of the following day from heat exhaustion, as was found by said justice.

Upon these facts the respondent urges his second point that the said John Walsh did not die as the result of "a personal injury sustained by accident" within the meaning of our compensation act; that he should be held to have died from the disease of heat exhaustion. The respondent has cited to us a number of cases in which it has been held that, in the law of accident insurance, heat stroke and sunstroke are regarded not as accidents but as inflammatory diseases of the brain. It should be observed that there is a distinction properly to be made between the construction which should be given to a contract of accident insurance and a workman's compensation law. In Fenton v. Thorley (1903) App. Cas. 443, Lord Macnaghten, speaking with reference to cases on policies of insurance intended to cover injuries described as arising from accidental, violent and external causes, said that he did not consider that they threw much light Upon the construction of the workman's compensation statute for "they turn on the meaning and effect of stipulations for the most part carefully framed in the interest of the insurers. But on the whole they do not, I think, make against the construction which I ask Your Lordships to put on the word 'accident' in the Workmen's Compensation Act." In the same case Lord Lindley, referring to the claim that the compensation statute ought to be construed as if it were a policy of insurance against accident, said: "In an action on a policy the causa proxima is alone considered in ascertaining the cause of loss; but in cases of other contracts and in questions of tort the causa causans is by no means disregarded."

The respondent has also argued that the question before us is analogous to that involved in certain cases where compensation has been denied for a death resulting from typhoid fever.' Finley v. Tullamore Union, 7 B. W. C. C. 973; State v. District Court (Minn.) 164 N. W. 810. In each of these cases it was held that the infection producing the disease, while perhaps received in the course of the employment, could not be ascribed to any specific time and hence was not within the meaning properly to be given to the expression "accidental injury" or "injury by accident"; for there was no specific occurrence shown in the nature of an accident which set up the disease in the body of the workman. However, in Vennen v. New Dells Lumber Co., 161 Wis. 370, 154 N. W. 640, L. R. A. 1916A, 273, a majority of the court held that a workman who had died as the result of typhoid fever, with which he became afflicted by reason of the presence of bacteria in the drinking water furnished to him by the defendant, should be held to have died of personal injury accidentally sustained within the meaning of the Wisconsin Workmen's Compensation Act. Also in |Ætna Life Ins. Co. v. Portland Gas & Coke Co., 229 Fed. 552, 144 C. C. A. 12, L. R. A. 1916D, 1027, in passing upon an indemnity insurance policy, the court held that a workman who had contracted typhoid fever from drinking water furnished by his employer suffered from a bodily injury accidentally received by reason of the business described in the policy. The case of Hood & Son v. Maryland Casualty Co., 206 Mass. 223. 92 N. E. 329, 30 L. R. A. (N. S.) 1192, 138 Am. St Rep. 379, involved the construction of an employer's indemnity insurance policy. The court held that any employe of the insured who in the course of his employment in the stable of the insured had contracted the disease of glanders had accidentally suffered bodily injury in the operation of the business of the insured. The Massachusetts court applied the rule laid down in certain English Compensation Cases, which are known as the anthrax cases, of which we will speak later, and held that "the injury was brought about accidentally, within the fair scope and meaning of the policy." In the instant case we are not required to pass upon the question whether a workman, who in the course of his employment has contracted a disease of the nature of typhoid fever or glanders, should be held to have sustained a physical injury by accident, and we express no opinion on that question; but, in considering this portion of the respondent's argument, we would point out that there is authority for such contention, even upon the analogy of cases involving the law of accident insurance.

The respondent has further urged upon our consideration the claim that the disease of heat stroke should be regarded as in the fame class with lead poisoning and other occupational diseases; and it has cited a number of cases to us which hold that such a disease, when contracted in the course of a workman's employment, is not to be regarded as an injury resulting from accident. There are many other cases in the English and American reports which might have been cited to the same effect. In most of them it has been regarded as an important consideration, as was said by the Supreme Court of Michigan in Adams v. Acme White Lead & Color Works, 182 Mich. 157, 148 N. W. 485, L. R. A. 1916A, 283, Ann. Cas. 1916D, 689, cited on the respondent's brief, that lead poisoning does not arise suddenly and violently, but comes only after long exposure. "In occupational diseases it is drop by drop, it is little by little, day after day, for weeks and months, and finally enough is accumulated to produce symptoms." Although the Michigan court held that their compensation act did not provide recovery for industrial or occupational diseases, because such diseases did not arise from accident, that court did hold, in La Veck v. Parke Davis & Co., 190 Mich. 604, 157 N. W. 72, L. R. A. 1916D, 1277, that a workman who suffered paralysis resulting from the rupture of a small blood vessel in the brain, caused by over exertion in a room where a high degree of heat was required, was entitled to compensation for accident within the Workmen's Compensation Act, and held, further, that Adams v. Acme White Lead & Color Works, supra, was not controlling.

The word "accident" is not one of precise meaning as that word is used in the various compensation acts. In the case of Hensey v. White (1900) 1 Q. B. 481, the Court of Appeal had applied the word "fortuitous" to the term "injury by accident." in Fento'n v. Thorley (1903) App. Cas. 443, in the House of Lords, Lord Macnaghten said that the use of the word "fortuitous" was to be regretted. If it introduced the element of haphazard it was misleading and not warranted by anything in the act; and he came to the conclusion that:

"The expression 'accident' is used in the popular and ordinary sense of the word as denoting an unlooked for mishap or an untoward event which...